Taking it easy can be boring, so I baked bread. It could have turned out better; I am out of practice. I thought the dough was too moist, so I added more flour. Based on the density of the loaf, I probably should have added even more.
My wife did make split pea soup, which has carrot and onion in it for flavor, as you can see in the opening photo. She also decided that we don’t need any groceries, even though we’re low on celery. That doesn’t sound serious to me, but I have been informed that it’s an ingredient in many home-cooked recipes.
All I know about celery is it tastes better with peanut butter inside it, and it is very difficult to grow in your own garden, so we won’t be trying that. I wouldn’t be shocked to find out we have a can of dehydrated celery in our prepper pantry, but I’m content to leave it there for now.
In any case, we’re still eating well.
The Costco Report
A neighbor made the trip to Costco and reported the following on the local list serve:
To help with social distancing, Costco is limiting the number of people allowed in the store at one time. (My guess is that this also helps minimize any chance of disturbances inside the store.) They also have spread out the cashiers so they are not right on top of each other. When you line up to check out, there are lines on the floor that show what is a safe distance from the customer in front of you.
Someone else on the list serve commented, Wow, Sam’s Club isn’t doing anything like that.
Costco was reportedly well stocked, at least first thing that morning, although the company put limits on high-demand items to prevent a run on them. For example, they had disinfectant wipes, but you could only buy one or two packages. (If I recall correctly, each package has three dispensers, so that is a large amount of wipes.)
I’ve heard elsewhere that some items still sell out by the end of the day. But overall, it sounds like Costco has it under control.
I’ve maintained an emergency shopping list on my phone for years with a series of items I would buy from Costco at the first hint of a big global emergency. (You know, something along the lines of India nuking Pakistan or vice versa.) The list has mostly meats that can be frozen, fresh food, and things like eggs, butter and cheese, items that are hard to store for the long term and must be purchase right before an emergency. There are also dried fruits, nuts, snacks, and pasta sauce on the list. Why sauce and not pasta? Because we have many pounds of pasta stored in #10 cans and 5-gallon pails, but nowhere near that much sauce. Dried pasta stores longer than jars of sauce. We don’t consume the sauce fast enough to rotate it out before it goes bad, so we limit our on-hand stores.
In any case, the coronavirus emergency has proved that the things most people buy in an emergency are not on my list, which is reassuring. We already had Lysol and bleach. We had plenty of toilet paper and paper towels. Also, if we were faced with purchase limits, we’d grab separate carts and checkout with different cashiers. So from what we have seen, our last minute shopping plan can stay intact.
Coronavirus Case at the Factory
There was a positive COVID-19 case at the factory where my eldest daughter’s fiancé works. When her employer found out, they put her on a paid two-week quarantine leave, even though she is working from home. She asked to continue to work from home, but that’s apparently not allowed. (Silly rule, if you ask me.)
Two weeks off and not being allowed to leave the house is going to drive her crazy. I bet she’ll have the cleanest house in town, because that’s one thing she does when she has idle hands. Her fiancé will also eat even better than he normally does because he will have extra time to cook and bake.
I told her she needs a cheap, time consuming hobby. Hmm. A cheap hobby is a bit of an oxymoron. The only one I can think of is whittling, assuming you can scrounge a piece of wood.
In the meantime, we’re hoping neither one of them gets it.
